Friday, January 10, 2014

If you haven’t seen “What Does the Fox Say?” yet, you’re
missing out. You can check it out here.

We love this video so much, we wish we had access to the
costume selection needed to make a parody video. But alas, you’ll just have to
settle for this blog post instead. (For some reason two dozen fox costumes
didn’t make the marketing budget.)

1. Listening to your incoming calls can change the way you do
business.

If you’ve never personally encountered a fox, you don’t know
for sure what it sounds like.

Businesses encounter this problem all the time. Not with
foxes usually, but with people. They don’t have a big picture of who their
prospects are or what they’re looking for when they call. Using call tracking
to record and listen in on your inbound calls will help you solve these
quandaries.

2. Outbound calls are just as important as inbound ones.

If you hit the fox in the head with a rock after he comes
all the way out of the woods to visit you, he probably won’t come back. (No one
hit the guy in the fox suit with a rock in the video, but it’s still a good
point.)

Your staff’s interaction with the people who call your
business makes a huge impact on whether or not they choose to start or continue
working with you. Recording outbound phone conversations allows you to catch
mishandled calls before they become your competition’s new client.

3. Using call recordings to identify common support issues is a must.

It never dawned on you that you didn’t know what noise a fox
made until a creative Norwegian band brought this issue to your attention. Then
you were aware. You didn’t know what a fox said. Now you do.

Having a way to identify your customers’ common support
issues in real time enables you to pick out large-scale problems and solve them
quickly.

We’re glad you’re as passionate about relating popular
YouTube sensations back to solutions for your business as we are. Keep it up!

Have you ever heard an urban legend that you were convinced
was true because everybody was talking
about it? Your boss, your mom, your next-door neighbor and everybody on Facebook, Twitter, the Social Media Network of the Week,
etc. Then one day you decide to mosey on over to snopes.com, and they blow
holes in this story that everybody
thought was true.

Yikes. Scary how fast tall tales can spread.

We’ll let Snopes handle the urban legends, but we would like
to roll up our sleeves and take on some call tracking myths that have been
circulating for quite some time (including “ain’t nobody got time for that” —
that’s why you clicked on this blog post, isn’t it?).

1. Call tracking belongs
in the age of the Zack Morris brick phone.

Phones used to be the size of bricks. And people used them
to — gasp! — call people. I mean, let’s be honest, when dial-up Internet takes
an entire lunch break to connect, wouldn’t you choose the brick phone over
email?

But now that Internet connection speeds have picked up, phones have shrunk and texting is a thing, phone calls aren’t as
popular anymore. This means call tracking is an outdated marketing method.
Right?

Wrong.

Did you know that 60
percent of online interactions lead to a phone call? In fact, we’d say that
phone calls are on the rise, since it’s easier than ever to do a quick
search for a business on your smartphone and place a phone call right then and
there. Which brings us to our next myth.

There’s really no need to memorize phone numbers anymore.
After all, people have access to all the numbers they need right there on their
phone (see above). So businesses shouldn’t waste resources on vanity numbers,
right?

Not necessarily.

Just because people don’t need to memorize phone numbers doesn't mean that vanity numbers are
automatically useless. Think about it. What phone numbers do you remember
without having to look at your phone? Maybe your significant other’s number,
your mom’s number or a random toll-free number that stuck with you, like
855.CALLBRIGHT. Chances are, you can count the numbers you remember on one
hand. And chances are, at least one of those numbers is a business’s toll-free
number.

Choose the right vanity number, and it will stick with
people without them having to search for it. Think of it as another opportunity
for branding!

3. Ain’t nobody got time
for that.

Time. What is that, again? Everybody needs it, but nobody
has it. So call tracking services just aren't worth it if you don’t have time
to go through all your phone calls to figure out which ads are bringing in the
big bucks. Right?

Nope.

Time doesn't have to be an issue, because call tracking
isn't just about the numbers. It's about providing businesses with the tools
they need to manage all those digits too. For instance, you can implement call scanning software that uses voice-recognition technology to scan calls for keywords
and phrases that you typically look for in phone calls, like “You’re awesome.
Where do I sign up?”

Whenever the software picks up on these phrases, it’ll
notify you. As a result, you’ll cut down on the time it takes to identify the ads
that bring in qualified leads and those
that show your marketing strategy needs a little TLC.

The moral of the story? Not everything you hear is true.
Call tracking is alive and well in the marketing world.

Now that 2014 is here, you’re probably joining the rest of
the population in making New Year’s resolutions. But let’s face it. Most of the
people that vow to lose weight in the New Year are back to sitting on the couch
scarfing down potato chips by February. According to Forbes,
of the 40 percent of Americans that make New Year’s resolutions, only 8 percent
achieve them. So while you may not be able to stick to your personal goals, we
have some common resolutions we think your marketing team can actually keep in
2014.

1. Lose weight.

No, we’re not saying you’re fat. Stop putting words in our
mouth! We’re talking about letting go of all of those ineffective campaigns
that are weighing you down. Forty percent of marketers waste money on ineffective
campaigns, which can really drain your wallet. Shed the dead weight by
implementing a call tracking
program to learn which of your campaigns are generating leads and which aren’t.

2. Try something new.

Are you looking for a way to jazz up your marketing? Why not
start a blog? An estimated 61 percent
of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase due to a recommendation from a
blog. For more tips on how to start a blog, check out this post
by Hubspot.

3. Save money.

It’s five timescheaper
to keep a current customer than to sign on a new one. So it makes sense to do
everything you can to make sure your team members are delivering top-notch
customer service. If you want to get the inside scoop on how your employees are
handling calls, consider using a callrecording software. You’ll be able to hear real-time recordings of inbound
and outbound phone calls right from your desk.

4. Get organized.

If you have several marketing campaigns running at the same
time, it can be hard to keep track of which campaigns are driving customers to call.
Assigning unique toll-free numbers to each
campaign will allow you to determine where each call your business receives is
coming from.